As per my post back on page 55: http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?p=22869729#p22869729. If you've read through the "even after you've beat the game" spoilers I posted & would like a chance then I'm on tonight for a while. Already had some killer groups rolling around that just crack me up nonstop! Anyways at the rate this thread is gaining pages I thought I'd just toss it out there again for anyone who missed it.

Just played with a couple of coworkers. I caught up to the exact place where one of them was stuck, he joined and we progressed to where our other coworker was in AC1. The other guy joins. Hours melt away. Totally satisfying.

I thought about it, until I compared its stats with the other things already up there. So far, my shit don't compare, so I melt it.

So far I've done the same thing, but that was before reading about the AH, now I dont know. Should probably look into the AH a bit. That said... if you do find a rare item, is the specs set at drop, or at the identifying stage. Because if its at the identifying, I should probably get something better if I just stash it and identify it with my higher level chars and then hand it back.

If that is the case, it's probably nice to save some unidentifyed rares on the stash for the highest lvl char. Right now I'm using hand-me-downs on the monk and demon hunter from my wizard that is 7-8 lvl's higher up, and the dmg on normal seem to be quite a bit over the enemies HP. So hand-me-downs from a higher lvl char that you start using as soon as you reach the lvl where you are able seem to just trash all the drops everywhere. My current demon hunter normal magical trashed the demon hunter rare I picked up, which is why I wonder bout the first part of this post.

I think that I'm done for now. The lag that I get in this game is just horrible. I keep dying randomly from invisible foes, who suddenly rubberband into place around me. I don't know how anyone can have fun like this.

I used to get that horribly during beta. Turns out it had nothing to do with the servers and was all about my video card. Replaced my GPU and it's been smooth sailing ever since.

I used the Can You Run It site (http://www.systemrequirementslab.com/cyri/intro.aspx) to see how my system compared to the minimum and recommended specs. Before, I was slightly low on CPU and notably low on GPU, and now my GPU is over the recommended on all counts and the game runs so much better and with a lot higher options, too.

The official Ars review sucks. After some minor spoilers, and a big ol' picture of the a boss on the first page, i stopped reading.

That same picture is on the box for the game, so it's not a spoiler. It's a good review that criticizes the game where it deserves it. In fact it should have been more critical of this half-ass game.

I'm not sure sure if the reviewer ever played Diablo before though. Apparently, holding down the mouse button makes you repeatedly attack, and that is new. No it isn't. That's how I played D2 constantly, so that part is totally out of left field.

Should hit it today. Had a really excellent ars hell group today. Two monks, wizard, demon hunter. We cleared through act 2 at a reasonably good rate. There were some deaths, but it was a lot better than yesterday's attempts at act 2.

Half the group left after we finished act 2, but myself and one of the monks continued on, we killed the first main boss in act 3 shortly before the server downtime was announced, and we're going to pick back up again and hopefully hit 60 and maybe finish a3 hell.

Good times. A few boss packs have had us dying over and over again, while predictably the actual bosses we killed without exception on the first try. Some of our strategies for defeating boss/champion packs have involved getting half the guys mad at one person, the other mad at the other person, then training them to opposite ends of the dungeon and dying, then we res and go kill the halves separately :O

There was also one boss pack that we got stuck on terrain and I killed from max range with magic missile. Magic missile has longer range than any other ability I've seen, the "homing missile" rune lets me shoot stuff off-screen.

Speaking of bosses that kicked my ass, there was one that I had TONS of trouble with on my barbarian.

Spoiler: show

Izual

is a total asshole if you are melee, you can't spend more than a couple seconds in actual melee range to hit him without dying. His melee hits snare you. While you're snared, he'll freeze you. He also has a charge move that hit my barbarian for 75% of his HP.

In contrast, I made

Spoiler: show

Diablo

my bitch, his mechanics are far more melee friendly and I was able to kill him pretty easily at level 31.

I had no issue with him at all with my barb, downed him and got the speed achievement.

Woot, finished the game on Normal. \o/ I really enjoyed the story, but Diablo himself didn't put up much of a fight! Though given I was at around 725dps in the final fight and mostly spammed Rapid Fire...

Identify and Town Portal being automatic abilities are huge Quality of Live improvements. As is the region-based account stash. And the fact that gems now stack.

I played some co-op for the first time last night with Nekojin. We both tend to prefer solo or known-friend groups in games, and this time around is no different. One of the nice touches I found was that if you go to town, each player has a banner that you can click to be ported directly to the character, so no having to run back. This can be awesome for long runs after dying; don't run, just port to town and click the banner to go straight back to the fight.

So, is there any point at all to crafting when you can usually pickup massive/cheap upgrades of the AH? I'm sure at the higher levels things arent so cheap, but running through normal it's pretty silly.

So, is there any point at all to crafting when you can usually pickup massive/cheap upgrades of the AH? I'm sure at the higher levels things arent so cheap, but running through normal it's pretty silly.

You can get legendary/rare recipes. Those would likely be a pretty good money maker.